The Catholic Church, assertive champion of the unborn, never short of powerful words in defence of their right to life, retreats into mumbling hesitancy on the subject of their right to life with God after death

The Catholic Church is known worldwide as a staunch defender of the right to life of the unborn. Its leaders regularly lock horns with ­governments and pro-choice advocates, ­challenging the liberalisation of abortion laws and condemning Catholic politicians who fail to defend church teaching. Even people whose knowledge of the Catholic Church is negligible are aware of its views on abortion. They dominate contemporary Church-State discourse, even making their way into a ­strident warning from the US bishops to the new Catholic President of the United States Joe Biden on the day of his inauguration.

Bishops are never more comfortable than when they are preaching to the world from the moral high ground of a Church which believes itself to have been missioned by God. The Church’s mission is the salvation of souls and salvation is fundamentally about life after death – yet the Church’s concern for the right to earthly life of the unborn is not matched by a similar concern for the right to salvation and eternal life of those little souls who die unbaptised before or at birth. These are not rare or exceptional cases. There are tens of millions of them every year. They die by ­clinical abortion, spontaneous miscarriage, stillbirth or from fatal conditions which cause them to die in utero or soon after birth.